Posts Tagged ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’

As it turned out, Las Senoras did not ‘write on’ and did not ‘read on’. They simply didn’t show up. Vanessa had the ingenious idea of luring them in with food: several giant-sized bottles of Pepsi and four huge pizzas. At the sight of the pizzas, three ladies were enticed into the meeting room, but it turned out that they were not Las Senoras, but merely hungry people in search of a bite. Since we had no takers anyway, we would have been very happy to feed them and slip in some intellectual input at the same time but, alas, they were chased away by Las Senoras Vice President, who told them in no uncertain terms that they shouldn’t be partaking of these edible delights if they were not intending to contribute to the discussion. We therefore lost our three of our potential attendees and were left only with the Vice President, who informed us that she was only there because the President herself was not able to come and had sent the Vice President in her stead. The Vice President was on a diet, in preparation for a trip to India and, therefore, she did not want to eat our pizza or drink our Pepsi and she had no further comments to make about books, so … she left.

Vanessa and I ate half a pizza on our own. The Vice President had advised us that 3pm on a Thursday afternoon was a very bad time to hold a Book Club meeting. ‘Everybody goes home at that time and no one in their right mind would want to come to a Book Club meeting.’ That left us wondering why so many students were milling about doing nothing and why, if no one was supposed to be around at that time, the meeting had been set for that wretched time of day. We considered this unfortunate state of affairs and decided that we would continue to meet at this time regardless, until students got the idea and more Senoras materialised. We discussed Jane Austen, Bridget Jones’s Diary and the two Mr Darcys: the Pride and Prejudice Mr Darcy and Bridget’s Mark Darcy (aka Colin Firth in the movie of the same name).

We also came to this conclusion … that while Jane Austen would most likely be acceptable but complex for Las Senoras, Bridget would be a no no. She smokes and she drinks … and much more. Sorry, Helen Fielding, but the book is out and, sorry, Colin Firth and Renee Zellweger, but the film is out too. All these things considered, it is strange that Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, which is about vampires, is on their list of favourite books (www.thetwilightsaga.com).

We could not manage to finish the other three and a half giant pizzas, so Vanessa went in search of students who looked like they might need a meal or two. She found a group of hungry-looking students huddled in the Cybercafe. ‘Oh, you should have told us you were having a meeting,’ they said. ‘We would have come.’